My work at Medical Museion
I am a postdoctoral researcher (or postdoc) at Medical Museion and the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research (CBMR) working on a project called Body Time . This interdisciplinary project brings together science, culture, history, and philosophy to think about circadian rhythms – the 24-hour cycles which drive our lives. I collaborate closely with chronobiologists at CBMR, in particular the Zierath and Gerhart-Hines groups.
I am especially interested in what I call ‘rhythmic history’ – or the idea that we can use rhythms and rhythmic disruption as a lens for interrogating the interface of body and environment in the past. My research focuses on the 19th and 20th centuries where the pressures of the ‘modern world’ led to increasing disruptions of daily rhythms in sleeping and eating. I also study the historical development of chronobiology as a scientific practice, with a special interest in early time isolation experiment sin the 1950s and 1960s. My research aims to bring temporality into conversation with the history of science and medicine.
I am also a curator and I have been involved in a number of exhibition projects while at Medical Museion including Z-Time (2020) and The World is in You (2021).
My background
I have an interdisciplinary background as a curator and a historian of science and medicine. I have an MA in Art Gallery and Museum Studies from the University of Manchester and I followed this with a number of collections and curatorial roles at institutions like the Science Museum in London, the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, and the Royal College of Physicians Museum. I gained my PhD from Queen Mary University of London in 2018 in the School of Geography, where my project ‘Imperial Mobilities’ explored imperial medical knowledges and practices in late nineteenth and early twentieth century London. I joined the Medical Museion and CBMR in my current role as a postdoctoral researcher in 2019.
My first book ‘Imperial Bodies in London: Empire, Mobility and the Making of British Medicine, 1880-1914) (UPitt Press) was published in 2021.
Collaborations
I would be very interested to hear from researchers and artists who work with themes around time and temporality, sleep and sleeplessness in its historical and cultural contexts, and light / electricity and health.
Supervision
I am open to supervising BA student projects from the SUND faculty on subjects in the history of science and medicine in the modern period.
Keywords
Temporality, circadian rhythm, medicine, knowledge, empire, sleep, digestion, physiology
